


Sidelines

by sssammich



Series: Sidelines (Tobin's POV) [1]
Category: Women's Soccer RPF
Genre: Angst, Complete, F/F, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-22
Updated: 2012-11-22
Packaged: 2017-11-20 19:16:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/588747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sssammich/pseuds/sssammich
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tobin is in love. But she’s the only one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sidelines

She’s there with them when they meet for the first time. She sees when he catches her eye and invites them to his table with his friends. She sees when the two of them take to the dance floor, Alex’s head thrown back in laughter because he was able to amuse her. She’s glad she drinks because she might have started just watching them dance impossibly close together; she’d have started drinking from that alone.

*

Alex sidles up next to her in the cab on the way home, a mixture of mint mojitos, sweat, and perfume hitting her all too close.

“Guess who gave me his number,” Alex singsongs, waving her phone at her face. She doesn’t remember his name, but she doesn’t have to, not when Alex reminds her, an excited smile on her face.

“That’s really exciting,” she offers, pulls herself enough to convince Alex – maybe the both of them – that it is really exciting.

*

When she gets home that night, Kelley is sitting on the couch, a closed book beside her, flipping through channels. She plops down beside her roommate and lets out a long, tired sigh. She turns when Kelley wordlessly looks at her, her hand mid-air with the remote. She looks away, rubbing her forehead and stares at a random episode of River Monsters on the television.

She starts to count backwards from ten in her head while she sees her roommate readjust in her spot beside her.

_…Four…three…two…one._

“Do you want to tell me or do I have to guess?”

She props her feet on their coffee table before taking a glance at her roommate.

“Guess.” She doesn’t know if she can let the words come out of her mouth.

“Alex.”

She nods.

“She kissed you.”

She laughs a little, bitterly, before shaking her head.

“You kissed her.”

She shakes her head again while she picks at her jeans. She’s afraid that if she turns to her roommate, she’ll see how pathetic she’s gotten.

Kelley puts a finger to her chin. “Is it about someone outside the two of you?”

Nod.

“Is it a boy?”

Nod.

“She met a boy.”

She nods but she lets her head hang low.

“Oh. Well, they probably won’t last all that long, you know how she doesn’t want to get serious with anybody.”

She knows that Kelley’s just saying this because they’re the most comforting words she knows her friend can give her while she nurses an unrequited crush on a straight girl. It’s like a rite of passage, almost, to feel your heart break from something no one can control; you just have to let it unfold hoping that you can (and will) survive from it.

She’s not paying attention to the television screen anymore, just flashes of her night out replaying in her mind.

*

Alex does get serious, but not just with anybody. With him.

She’s not surprised, not in the slightest, when Alex visits her one afternoon and excitedly informs her that she and he are going to try to see where this relationship goes. She lets the happiness reach her eyes just long enough to be believable to congratulate her friend before walking to the kitchen to fetch some water. Her tongue feels like sand and there’s a pang in her chest – one that feels a lot like a long practice under the blistering hot sun – that she gulps down the whole glass.

The pain ricochets in her ribcage and she wonders if she’ll break her own bones this way.

“Well as long as he treats you right,” she says with a short glance back to her friend as she decides at that moment to load the dishwasher.

“He does,” Alex says, sitting on the barstool, placing her focus back on her phone where she’s no doubt texting him back. She can hear the wistfulness in Alex’s voice and she has to fight the urge to just smash the plate against the counter.

*

She’s sitting at the pew just staring up at the altar. No one else is here since service has been over for at least four hours, but she doesn’t have anywhere else to go where she’s not inundated with thoughts of  _her_ , of  _them_.  She’s staring down the aisle towards the altar and sighs. It’s almost funny – in the way where you have to laugh or else you’ll cry – that she’d never considered her future wedding day outside of what her friends and family have expected for her: a man she’d fallen in love with standing at the bottom of the altar, excited to be her groom. But all she can picture is taking over his place, donning a wedding gown and staring down the aisle to wait for her own bride.

For a time, she couldn’t reconcile the idea of liking (letting alone loving) a woman with her faith. But looking at Megan, one of her heroes, she can attest that having feelings for a woman is a beautiful thing, a testament to God’s inexplicable powers to reach to the hearts of each person. She’s afraid, not because of having the chance to love a woman; she’s afraid that her love cannot be returned. And when she thinks about Alex and Servando together, the reality of her unreturned love becomes sickeningly palpable as each day passes.

*

Hope’s the first one to mention the white gold heart necklace dangling from Alex’s neck when the woman enters the locker room. Soon the rest of her teammates circle around Alex and coo at her new accessory. She keeps her distance, though, taking her time tying her laces and staring intently at her cleats trying to count backwards from one hundred. She jerks up when Kelley nudges her from behind.

“You have to say something about it,” Kelley whispers by her shoulder.

She purses her lips because she knows Kelley’s right. So she reminds herself of the time last week when she and Alex had toppled on each other laughing hysterically when she and some of their teammates held an impromptu party at the apartment and managed to make charades a drinking game.

The fond memory brings about a smile for her just in time for when Alex straddles the bench she’s sitting on, their knees touching. Alex leans forward, the necklace up against the back of her hand being showcased for her. They’re undeniably close, the concept of personal space completely abandoned. She’s also aware that Kelley’s gone off talking to Hope and Lauren leaving the two of them fairly alone.

“Isn’t it pretty sweet?”

“Yeah,” she breathes out and controls herself so as not to jerk her legs back from the touch. “Things must be getting serious if he’s gotten up to jewelry.”

She’s not sure if the smile is going to hold any longer, but she’s going to keep it up there for as long as she can.

“Yeah, I think it is. He’s just such a great guy. My parents love him, he gets along with our friends. I didn’t expect him to show up, but he did and things just kinda worked out, you know? It’s kind of amazing.”

But she doesn’t know. She doesn’t know how things  _just kinda work out._  She doesn’t know, and at this rate, she doubts she will.

She hears Christie’s children, Rylie and Reece, call for her and she turns her head to watch them run towards her. Their appearance revitalizes her smile and she can’t thank God enough for intervening when He does because she was seconds away from praying for help.

*

She’s working on some tricks in the indoor gym when she hears the metal door swing shut with a loud thud. She stops and turns, a little out of breath, to find Alex’s boyfriend walking towards her. Her first instinct is to start packing up and go. But over the months that he’s spent with them, she has a soft spot for him. It’s what makes her own heartache feel especially miserable. She likes the both of them and like that he’s made Alex as happy as he has already.

But she can’t stop wishing that they could switch places.

“Hey, Tobin. You have a minute?”

No, she doesn’t. “Yeah, sure. What’s up?”

“Alex and I are in the middle of a small fight right now and I can’t find her. Would you happen to know where she might be? She’s not answering my calls and I really need to talk to her.”

She knows exactly what this is about.

He went out with his teammates the other night and got a little rowdy for Alex’s taste and they’d had an argument the next day. She was there when Alex came to visit the apartment crying. She was there listening to Alex explain how sometimes she got so frustrated when he partied a little too hard. She was there cradling Alex in her arms in front of the television just as she’d dreamt up for so long, but under completely different circumstances. She was there when Kelley passed by the living room with a book in hand and stared at their predicament on the couch without a word. She was there when Kelley just gave her a look of warning and she’d nodded, almost imperceptibly, because she knew that this was only feeding the fire of her anguish.

She sighs as she picks up the ball she’s been using and rests it against her hip. This is about Alex, not her, and not even him. She may like him, but she can easily do without him. But Alex – that’s a different story.

“You know how she gets. Just, you know, give her some time. She’ll go to you when she’s ready.”

“Is there nothing I can do?”

She shrugs and looks at him intently. “Just wait for her. I’ll talk to her and maybe she’ll talk to you sooner or something, but that’s all I can do for you.”

Wait for her because between the two of them, the odds are in his favor.

He mulls things over but acquiesces. “Just please talk to her, okay? Please?”

She nods at him, her jaw tense. She dribbles the ball and forces herself to reciprocate the smile he’s giving her. When he’s disappeared from her sight and has left, she drops the ball from her side and kicks it with all of her power across the gym.

The echoing slap of the ball on the padded wall reverberates in her ears even after she’s walked out.

*

She’s lying in the middle of the field before practice with her limbs outstretched. Her eyes are closed to shield herself from the sunlight. Plus she’s been praying for strength, her mental and emotional energy depleting as of late.

She can hear cleats against grass but she doesn’t bother to turn her head or open her eyes. She figures that whoever it is will make their presence known one way or another.

She expects a tap on her bare foot or her hand or something. What she doesn’t expect is Alex taking the empty space beside her, taking on a similar outstretched position and resting her head on her arm. She drops her head back down and keeps her eyes closed, doesn’t want to think about anything.

“That’s my arm.”

“I didn’t notice.”

She doesn’t say more even though she’s well aware where this interaction is going.

“Hey, Tobin.”

“Hmm?”

“I just wanna say thanks.”

“For what?”

She knows for what, she knows it’s for Alex and Servando making up. She was there on the sidelines the day after he’d come to her for help. She saw the two of them stand by the fence talking things out. Alex had asked her to stay, so she stayed.

“He and I are good again.”

She wants to say that she and her have always been good, sometimes too good.

“It’s my Christian duty to help a friend.”

She can feel the warmth of the sun beating down on her skin, but what unnerves her is that she can feel Alex staring at her. She doesn’t dare open her eyes.

She feels Alex’s lips on her cheek; it’s an offer of gratitude that serves better than words ever could. It’s not the first time she’s received it. And if she’s to remain the best friend to this wonderful woman, she’s certain that it’s not going to be the last.

But the fact that those lips will never travel further to the left to meet her own will always be the tug of the loose string to her complete undoing.

The warmth of Alex’s presence by her side is replaced by the coldness of a breeze and she knows that her best friend has left her. She picks her head up and winces through the sunlight seeing Alex’s retreating figure.

And it’s cruel, the way she’s been blessed and been cursed all in the same lightning strike: she’s struck with one of the best friends she could ever ask for only to fall in love knowing full well that Alex will always walk away from her offered heart.


End file.
